Capture webcam from the command line with CommandCam

CommandCam is an open-source tool for Windows that allows you to easily capture still images from a webcam from the terminal, developed by Ted Burke.

CommandCam is a very simple tool but it can sometimes be a great help in a project. We simply have to run a command, and we have our webcam capture.

For example, imagine you connect via SSH to a computer remotely, or you want to schedule the capture of an image, or even react to a motion sensor to take a photo, as if it were an “alarm”.

In these and many other cases, integrating CommandCam is very easy. We only have to launch a command prompt. And there are a thousand ways and options to launch a command.

CommandCam uses the Microsoft DirectShow API to access the images. Therefore, it should be compatible with most USB cameras.

How to use CommandCam?

As I said, one of the main features of CommandCam is its simplicity. We only have to execute this command,

Where output.bmp is the name of the file with which we want to save the capture.

It is also possible to specify a delay between receiving the command and performing the capture, with the parameter /delay [milliseconds]. For example like this,

On the other hand, in case of having multiple devices connected, it is possible to choose which one we want to use by using the parameter /devnum [device_number] like this

Or with the device name using /devname [device_name]

We can also get a list of compatible devices with /devlist

Or the list with more details with the parameter /devlistdetail

Finally, we can make CommandCam not show any text in the console with the /quiet parameter

CommandCam is written in C++, and the entire application is barely 550 lines. It is Open Source and all the code and information are available on GitHub - tedburke/CommandCam and on the author’s blog.